A Leader in Crisis
About the author: Josh Peterson ‘19 is a Global Policy Intern at the European Council for Foreign Relations. He is a Stanford undergraduate majoring in German Studies and Philosophy.
It’s been an unusually rainy week for June in Berlin — but oddly enough, the gloomy weather appropriately reflects the bleak state of Germany both on the football-field and off. While domestic affairs have surely dominated the news cycle in the US this week, German internal affairs have had their own difficult week. Due to fighting within the conservative part of the coalition government, it is becoming increasingly likely that Angela Merkel will lose her seat as Chancellor, creating a crisis not only within Germany, but for the entire liberal order of the European Union. To make matters worse, Germany lost its first game in the World Cup against Mexico. So it’s very possible that the two of the most powerful people in Germany — the Chancellor and the Coach of the National Soccer Team — might be looking for new jobs soon.
With this in mind, it wasn’t exactly the calmest week to join a policy office in Berlin. I’ve just begun work at the European Council for Foreign Relations in Berlin, where I’m interning in the Director’s Office as a Policy Research Assistant. The ECFR is modeled, more or less, on its American counterpart, the Council for Foreign Relations, although the two have no official ties. The ECFR has nine offices, but the Berlin office is the heart of its functioning, housing the director, many senior policy fellows, the development team and more. The ECFR has a wide-range of expertise, but publishes most frequently on the European relationship to China, MENA, and Eastern Europe. As a Research Assistant to the Director, I will be working with Mark Leonard, CEO and Director of ECFR, on a number of long-term projects throughout the summer while also assisting on other short-term publications and projects in the office.
Already in my first week, I’ve been working on a number of substantive projects. When I arrived at work Monday morning, there was an emergency summit about the political fault-lines dividing Europe, and in my first three hours in the office, I had already edited and distributed a working-paper to offices in Berlin, Sofia, and Warsaw. We also recorded a podcast with a number of senior policy fellows (pictured) in response to the German Coalition Crisis facing Merkel. The office has been abuzz with politicians and politicos this week, as the crisis looks like it will continue late into next week after a summit in Brussels this weekend amongst European heads-of-state.
Other than that, I’ve begun work on my big research project for the summer. Europe is often considered to be technologically behind many other national players with regard to its position in the Digital Revolution. The United States, China, Russia, and to some extent, members of the BRICS countries have invested heavily in AI research, Cryptocurrency capabilities, or digital markets. In order to bring some technological awareness to EU policymakers, I will be working on a book-length project about connectivity, and its risks and benefits for Wider Europe. In order to lay the groundwork for this project, I’ve designed a ten-part seminar series this week to be done in Berlin and London. In this series, we’ll bring theory and policy together with technological expertise to explore how the Digital Revolution is changing our most fundamental paradigms of International Relations Theories. Topics will include “Regulation Wars, IP Wars, and Mini-Lateralism — Changing Forms of Conflict in the Digital Age” and “Sovereignty in the Digital Age — Technological Empowerment of Non-State Actors.” While these are big topics, my office is giving me plenty of time to mull over these deep questions — a true benefit of working in a Think Tank (and doing office yoga with my co-workers).
Hopefully by the time of my next blog post, Germany will have won the World Cup, the government will have sorted its problems out, and I will be a bit further along in research to share. Until then, I’ll be reading up on the digital state of Europe, figuring out the Berlin subway network, and trying to stay dry in this Berlin rain.
